The White House on Tuesday provided new details — and revised others — about the dramatic raid that left Osama bin Laden dead in his Pakistani hideaway Monday, saying the world’s most feared terrorist was unarmed when he was shot and that his wife was wounded while charging American commandos.

A White House spokesman issued the more textured account on a day of rapid-fire developments, including an assurance by CIA Director Leon Panetta that grisly death photos of bin Laden would "ultimately" be released to quell skepticism about the al Qaeda leader’s demise.

Lawmakers from both parties, meanwhile, pointedly questioned whether members of Pakistan’s government knew of the mass murderer in their midst, an assertion that nation’s leaders have repeatedly denied. Bin Laden was found in a fortified villa that had aroused the suspicions of neighbors in Abbottabad, an affluent suburb of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), a member of the Senate committee that deals with foreign aid, said aid to Pakistan should be suspended until Americans can be certain its stated ally isn’t "shielding terrorists."

"Before we send another dime, we need to know whether Pakistan truly stands with us in the fight against terrorism," Lautenberg said.

In its own strongly worded statement, Pakistan’s foreign ministry called the special forces raid an "unauthorized unilateral action" that "cannot be taken as a rule."

"Such an event shall not serve as a future precedent for any state, including the U.S.," the statement said. "Such actions undermine cooperation and may also sometime constitute threat to international peace and security."

At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney added new details about the early morning assault and corrected several inaccuracies spread by members of the administration Monday. Carney attributed the misstatements to the piecemeal nature in which information had come in from the field.

Chief among the discrepancies was a statement Monday that bin Laden had been armed when he was killed. Carney said Tuesday that bin Laden was not carrying a weapon. The spokesman said it remains accurate that bin Laden resisted capture, though he did not say how.

Pressed by reporters, the spokesman said resistance "does not require a firearm."

CIA Director Panetta provided slightly more information in an interview with PBS NewsHour, saying bin Laden made "some threatening moves that ... clearly represented a clear threat to our guys. And that’s the reason they fired."

In a separate interview with NBC News, Panetta said the Navy SEAL team had clear authority to kill bin Laden but would have taken him alive had he willingly surrendered.

"If he suddenly put up his hands and offered to be captured, then they would have the opportunity, obviously, to capture him," Panetta said. "But that opportunity never developed."

Bin Laden, code-named "Geronimo" for purposes of the raid, was shot once in the chest and once in the head.

In another revision, Carney indicated women were not used as human shields by bin Laden or his protectors. Bin Laden’s wife — initially reported dead — was shot in the leg and injured when she charged the Navy SEALs who entered the terror chief’s personal quarters.

Another woman — the wife of the al Qaeda courier intelligence agencies tracked to the walled compound — was killed in the crossfire of a raging gun battle on the villa’s first floor, Carney said.

Also killed were the courier, his brother and bin Laden’s son, Hamza, initially identified by the white House as Khaled.

Despite its flawless execution, the 40-minute assault got off to a troublesome start when one of the Blackhawk helicopters ferrying the commandos was forced to make a hard landing at the target site, Carney said.

Officials suspect higher-than-expected air temperature interfered with the helicopter’s ability to hover, an aeronautical condition known as "hot and high."

None of the Americans was injured when the chopper went down, and a backup helicopter was called in to retrieve the SEALs. The damaged Blackhawk was destroyed before the operation ended.

Other residents of the compound — more than a dozen women and children — were bound with plastic handcuffs and left outside the villa as the incursion force headed back to Afghanistan, where bin Laden’s body was subjected to DNA testing. Some 10 hours after his death, bin Laden was buried at sea.

Carney said the burial — at an undisclosed location in the North Arabian Sea — followed a ceremony in keeping with Islamic practices aboard the USS Carl Vinson.

"The deceased’s body was washed and then placed in a white sheet," the spokesman said. "The body was placed in a weighted bag. A military officer read prepared religious remarks, which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker. After the words were complete, the body was placed on prepared flat board, tipped up, and the deceased’s body eased into the sea."

The ceremony was captured on videotape, but it remained unclear Tuesday if the White House would release the footage. Panetta, who spoke about the photos of bin Laden’s body, did not mention the video in a series of interviews.

He put no timeframe on the release of the photos, which have been described by several lawmakers who saw them as "gruesome."

"The government obviously has been talking about how best to do this, but I don’t think there was any question that ultimately a photograph would be presented to the public," Panetta said.

Nearly 10 years into the American government’s "war on terror," the raid yielded tangible benefits beyond the death of bin Laden, who set in motion the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and who repeatedly taunted the governments of the United States and Europe in videotaped messages.

Administration officials said the SEAL team left bin Laden’s compound with a trove of intelligence information, including computer hard drives, CDs, portable storage drives and documents. A CIA task force was already reviewing the evidence with the aim of stopping future attacks and locating other al Qaeda figures, the officials said.

The operation’s success has given a political boost to President Obama, who is due to visit Ground Zero tomorrow to meet with families of some 9/11 victims. The president also is expected to give a speech and tour the site.